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Marvel Anime: X-Men reimagines Dr. Moira Mactaggert as Dr. Yui Sasaki, with her country of origin changed from Scotland to Japan. Her physical appearance, backstory, characterization and relationship with Professor Xavier all remain intact however. Her formerly-white son Kevin is also changed to a Japanese boy named Takeo. Part of it is that fans would not want Moira to turn out to have done what we find out Sasaki did.

Ganota no Onna is a bizarre comedy that takes the cast of Mobile Suit Gundam and re-imagines them as part of a Japanese corporate struggle in the present day. The heroine, Utsuki Ganota, is a race-swapped and Gender Flipped version of Char Aznable, the White antagonist of the original series. Other characters who are both race-swapped and gender-flipped are Sayla Mass ("Seiya Ganota") and Bright Noa ("Noa Furuido").

In an inversion of what is usually the case with anime-based movies, the primarily Germanic cast of Attack on Titan are played by Japanese actors in th Japanese live action movie, creating a plot hole since the character Mikasa is explicitly stated to be the last known person of Asian descent alive. Fortunately, though, the movie successfully fixes this hole by moving the setting to Japan. This still leaves a major plot hole in which five characters (Eren, Armin, Jean, Sasha, and Hange/Hans) still have German names.

The shoujomangaBronze Angel, which is based loosely on Pushkin's life. There the famous poet, who was at most a little more tan than other Russians, is depicted as deeply brown-skinned. Could be some kind of Japanese color symbolism, though.

The Spider-Man manga changed Peter Parker into a Japanese boy named Yu Komori.

Kenichi Sonoda's manga/OVA Riding Bean gave the titular character a sidekick named Irene "Rally" Vincent (a caucasian woman). The title was intended to be a pilot for a longer-running series, but when that fell through, Sonoda retooled the concepts and characters into Gunsmith Cats, where Rally becomes the main character and is re-imagined as half Indian.

There is a trio of obscure female Batman villains from back in the 1960's named Tiger Moth, Silken Spider, and Dragon Fly. In their first (and for several decades, ONLY) appearance, all three women were white. When they finally reappeared 40 years later during the 2008 Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul storyline, Silken Spider was now shown to be black, while Dragon Fly was Asian American.

The all-ages Thor: The Mighty Avenger series portrayed the Norse God Heimdall as a black man in order to correspond with the popular live-action film Thor film, which had Afro-British actor Idris Elba cast as the character in question.

A retcon change more than anything, but Lian Harper originally had curly, red hair and looked more like her dad. She was later changed to having straight black hair and looking more Asian, which seems more accurate considering her mom is the half-Asian villainess Cheshire. Young Justice mixed the two designs, as Lian in the cartoon has red hair but otherwise looks like her revised design.

The Doctor Who Magazine comic strips featuring the Eighth Doctor included a black incarnation of the TV show's most famous recurring villain, the Master, who has been white in all his TV incarnations before and since.

Green Lantern Kyle Rayner was established for a long time in his origin as being the son of a single mother and of Irish descent. Eventually, one story had him finally track down his dad and discover he was half-Hispanic. The retcon was never referenced all that much by later writers and the way of drawing Kyle was never changed too much. It was eventually forgotten about in the New 52 continuity, and Kyle's dad was made into a white guy.

The Earth-7 version of the Thunderer is Aboriginal. Which actually makes sense, since Wandjina (DC's original Captain Ersatz of The Mighty Thor, which the character is based on) was named after an Aboriginal spirit. Or it would if he was still called Wandjina, anyway. (Earth-8's Wundajin, meanwhile, is still white.)

The Justice League of Earth-23 consists of black versions of the mainstream DCU heroes.

In Society of Super-Heroes: Conquerors of the Counter-World #1, Doc Fate, the Doctor Fate of Earth-20, is a black gunslinger.

In-Verse example: In Camelot 3000, Sir Gawain's reincarnation is African, and Sir Galahad's is Japanese. Both were Britons in their previous lives.

Word of God is that several white characters from the cartoons have been given race lifts. Minx is South Asian, Riot is half-Asian, Stormer and Craig are half-Israeli, etc.

In DC's 2016 reboot of the Bloodlines characters, Gunfire and Sparx (white in the previous continuity) are now black. Most of the characters were tweaked in some way — Loose Cannon and Anima were significantly de-aged, for instance.

It was assumed the first Robin, Dick Grayson, was white until a story in the 2000s revealed that he was of Romani heritage.

Guess Who ('s Coming to Dinner) and The Honeymooners are both race-switching remakes.

Ford Prefect in the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie was played by Mos Def. Most of the other major characters were played by Americans, which was rather jarring to many who'd expected British actors as in the radio and TV versions, but most of the other characters were aliens anyway, and Word of God stated that Arthur Dent is the only necessarily British character in the story. (Also, Trillian - the only other major Earth character - was played by a British actress on radio but by an American in the TV version.)

Though it is quite the Reverse Funny Aneurysm hearing Mos Def say the line "What if I told you I wasn't from Guildford?"

The novel The Pelican Brief had the character of Gray Grantham as (a) white, and (b) eventually getting involved with Darby Shaw. In the movie, Gray was played by Denzel Washington, and he doesn't get involved with Julia Roberts. Julia, in an interview, said she was on board with making out with Denzel at any time, and it was a case of Executive Meddling.

The long rumored, much troubledDallas movie reboot was going to see Jennifer Lopez play Sue Ellen Ewing, but she ended up quitting the production (currently Julie Benz is the leading candidate for the part).

Another in-film example: in Tropic Thunder, the white character actor dons blackface and stereotypical mannerisms to become a black sergeant.

He also uses his method acting to portray an East Asian of indeterminate ethnicity briefly (using a hat and robes to cover hide his skin color. Well, his skin color at the time).

In fact, the inability of Kirk Lazarus (the white Australian actor who plays both roles mentioned above) to get a firm sense of who he really is becomes a Running Gag throughout the film. He seems to realize that he's not black, making casual references to his status as an actor and his past roles, but does so in a stereotypical "ghetto" accent, as he refuses to break character at any time during production. In addition, and while speaking in that same accent, Lazarus steadfastly refuses to exercise N-Word Privileges and won't let anyone else do so, either - even if they really are black. ("For 400 years, that word has kept us [emphasis added] down.") He eventually cannot keep up the charade any longer, and in a climactic scene strips off his curly black wig and starts to rub off some of his brown makeup, vocally imitating various past movie characters before finally returning to his everyday Australian accent.

Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, the film adaptation of the Confessions of Georgia Nicolson series, cast an Indian girl as Ellen (described as blonde in the books). This is probably because the character was originally a Composite Character that did not appear in the books, but re-dubbed as Ellen after protests from fans.

In Live and Let Die, the filmmakers wanted to cast a black actress as Miss Solitaire despite her being white in the books, since all the villains were black and it made little sense that the main romantic lead just so happened to be the only white person in the Big Bad's employ. Unfortunately, racial tensions at the time made this impossible, and we wouldn't get a black lead Bond Girl until 2002's Die Another Day.

Moneypenny is black in the new series as well, where she's played by Naomi Harris. This is presented as a plot twist; she's introduced in Skyfall as an MI-6 agent known only as Eve and doesn't appear in the trailers for the film despite her prominent role. It's only at the end of the movie, where she retires from active duty to become the new M's secretary, that she reveals her last name is Moneypenny.

In the comic book movie version of Daredevil, the normally white mobster, Kingpin/Wilson Fisk is played by African-American actor Michael Clarke Duncan, since the studio couldn't find anyone who was white, of sufficient size, and could actually act. This change was generally well received. He was still big, scary and intimidating like in the comics, and Duncan even gained weight in order to better look the part.

Idris Elba plays the Asgardian Heimdall, who is white in the comics. Because the Asgardians are based on the Norse gods, and because some people believe they should, for whatever reason, all look like Norse people, this casting caused a bit of a kerfuffle. That the mythology explicitly refers to Heimdall as "the whitest of the gods" didn't help. Ultimately, the movie is based on the comics, which started as an In-Name-Only interpretation of myth, so racial casting is just the tip of the iceberg.

S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jasper Sitwell was played by a Mexican-American actor.

The Muppets' version of The Wizard of Oz not only changed Dorothy from being an 11-year old white girl to a young black woman, they also made her dream of becoming a singer. This is, ironically, one of the most faithful adaptations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to date.

In the movie adaptation of Matilda, Lavender is black; in the book she is white.

In William Shakespeares Romeoand Juliet, Mercutio and the Prince, who are relatives, are both played by black actors. Since the setting is moved from the Italian city of Verona to "Verona Beach," California (where the "Prince" is the chief of police), this doesn't cause any strangeness.

Peculiarly, though, Paris, who is also supposed to be related to Mercutio and the Prince in the original script, is still white.

The British film Death at a Funeral was remade as an American movie with mostly black actors.

In the original episodes of Police Squad! Nordberg was played by Peter Lupus, while in the The Naked Gun films he was played by O.J. Simpson.

An in-universe example in R.I.P.D.. To everyone except other R.I.P.D. officers, Nick appears to be an elderly Chinese man.

The character of Conn MacCleary in the The Destroyer novels by Sapir and Murphy is a red haired Irishman, but in the movie Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, he is played by J.A. Preston, a black man.

One of the most controversial Race Lifts in recent history is in Fantastic Four (2015) and the decision to make Johnny Storm black. Within the context of the movie, however, his being black is more believable than Sue being white, as she was adopted into a black family. This itself led to a minor Broken Base about whether keeping Sue white is progressive for showing a mixed family, or if Fox didn't want a black female lead. Johnny's actor Michael B. Jordan said in interviews that people won't be so concerned about race once they see the movie. In a way he was right; skin color is the least of this movie's problems.

In Fantastic Four (2005), Ben's blind girlfriend Alicia Masters is changed to black. However, this change was better received and, in the film's deleted scenes, her race adds some subtext to their romance. Alicia's blackness was retained in the Fantastic Four cartoon released around that time, and her stepfather the Puppet Master was made black as well.

Whilst his race is never explicitly mentioned in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, but based on both the photograph the character was based on that was included in the book and he fact that Wights are stated to be so indistinctive that they can look like anyone else with simple prosthetics; it can be assumed that the Wight who stalked the Portmans is Caucasian. In the film adaptation, his counterpart Mr. Barron is played by African-American actor Samuel L. Jackson.

In the The Dark Tower film Roland the gunslinger is played by Idris Elba, who is black. In the books Roland is technically an alien, but looks like a white dude, and his white privilege and racial ignorance becomes a key plot point in one of the books.

The Girl With All The Gifts: Melanie in the film is turned into a black girl, while the book opens with her remark about her name meaning this, but she actually has very fair skin, making it quite ironic.

Live-Action TV

In the Adam West Batman series, not only did Catwoman get Other Darrined, she received a Race Lift in the process. No one (except the audience) seemed to notice that Catwoman suddenly changed from being the very white Julie Newmar to the not-so white Eartha Kitt, and got about a foot shorter in the process.

Salli Richardson-Whitfield has stated in interviews that the original script for Eureka called for her character, Alison Blake, to be a blonde, blue-eyed white woman.

The twins in the Twitches books are white, but the Disney Channel Original Movie cast the biracial twins Tia and Tamera Mowry of Sister Sister fame. This may be mere pragmatic casting: If you need identical twins, there's only a few with proven acting experience, moreso if you need a certain age (or at least look like it), and the Mowrys were already friendly with Disney.

Happens to two characters in Legend of the Seeker. In the book series it's based on, Chase is white, while he's a Maori in the show. And General Trimack, a full-blooded D'Harannote Full blooded D'harans typically being white with blond hair and blue eyes who is noted in every appearance for his fiery red hair, is made black.

The fans of the book care more about such things as Kahlan's eyes being blue instead of green (the show just has to rub it in, though, with every Confession shot focusing on her eyes) and Darken Rahl not having white hair (they did give his father Panis Rahl white hair in the flashbacks, though), even though Craig Parker previously played the blond Haldir in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

In the television series based on the Pretty Little Liars books, white Emily is changed to an Ambiguously Brown character(played by Shay Mitchell, who is white/Filipino). This is especially obvious because Emily's parents in the books were racists.

The television adaptation of The Middleman starred Cuban Natalie Morales playing Wendy Watson who had originally been a fair-skinned redhead.

"The Blind Banker", the second episode of the BBC's Sherlock, used Chinese Yellow Peril gangsters as the villains. In the original Sherlock Holmes story the episode was based on, the villains were American gangsters from Chicago.

In Game of Thrones, pirate Salladhor Saan, merchant prince Xaro Xhoan Daxos and bodyguard Areo Hotah are changed into emigrants from the Summer Isles and cast with actors of African descent. This was probably done to make them more visibly foreign and to diversify the cast. In the books, all these characters come from cultures with light skin: Xaro is a milky-skinned Qartheen, Salladhor is from Lys (vaguely Southern Europe), and Areo is from Norvos (vaguely Eastern Europe).

The infamous live-action Toei Spider-Man TV series was set in Japan and had Peter Parker changed to "Takuya Yamashiro".

In the film and series La Femme Nikita, the title character is white. In the 2010 series Nikita she is played by Maggie Q, who is part Vietnamese.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand cast Peter Mensah, originally from Ghana, as the Gaulish gladiator Oenomaus. They also cast Manu Bennett, a half-Maori New Zealander, as Crixus, also a Gaul; this was a little less egregious, though.

In The BBC's The Musketeers, Porthos is played by mixed-race actor Howard Charles. Word of God is that this is a nod to Dumas himself, whose grandmother was of African origin.

And in the second season, Porthos's full backstory was revealed and turned out to be very clearly inspired by the Dumas family's - Porthos is the son of an aristocrat's affair with a black servant woman, and was brought into the Musketeers by a friend of his father's who felt guilty about helping the father to abandon his black mistress and child.

In the television series The Flash, Iris West and her younger brother Wally are black. In the source comics they are aunt and nephew, and Iris is white; Wally was originally white as well before being changed to half-black half-white in the New 52 reboot.

Jimmy - er, James Olsen is a muscular, bald black man instead of the gangly white redhead he normally is. He also received an Age Lift, with an extra dose of Adaptational Attractiveness.

Hank Henshaw, better known as the Cyborg Superman, is also black. Then he turned out to actually be J'onn J'onnz, the Martian Manhunter. Ironically, while the latter is a Martian and his alter ego is usually white, he has been portrayed, in both live action and voice acting, primarily by black men.

A vocal example: For the most part of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Tom Servo has been voiced by white men: J. Elvis Weinstein and Kevin Murphy. The reboot has him voiced by African-American Baron Vaughn.

Fiona from the second season of Round the Twist is portrayed by an aboriginal actress, despite being white in the first. This example can also apply to Changing The Minority because she is portrayed by a white actress again in subsequent seasons.

The Magicians: Dean Fogg, described in the books as white, is black here. Penny, also described as white, is Indian American.

Moira, Luke and Offred's daughter are white in the novel (and movie adaptation). The TV series makes Moira black, and the others mixed race.

Along with having Handmaids who are women of color, quite a few of the regime's military enforcers are shown to be black men. In the novel, the Gilead regime is officially white supremacist as well as misogynist. Black people (called the "Children of Ham") are "resettled" in North Dakota.

When CBS announced that a pilot for an adult Nancy Drew series was in development, they initially said that they were specifically trying to cast a minority actress in the title role. They ultimately cast Sarah Shahi, who is part Middle Eastern descent, and part European Spanish, but her father was portrayed by the white Anthony Edwards. It was never exactly clear if the character was still going to be presented as white, and the pilot was not picked up to series.

Tabletop Games

Clue, some versions of the American edition had Miss Scarlett changed to an Asian Dragon Lady and she was known as "The Mercenary of Macao".

Theatre

Obviously, this is already more common in theatre than it is elsewhere due to its universality - in most theater companies, unless a part is specifically needed to be played by an actor of a particular race, it's usually fair game for anyone who qualifies for it in terms of acting or vocal skill. However, sometimes it takes a more traditional form, when the work in question is an adaptation of something that starred white characters or is a new staging of an older work. Then, often, the Original Cast Precedent settles in. Notable examples include:

Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar (often played by a black man after the original Broadway production and the 1972 film; this is, however, not always the case)

Martha in Spring Awakening (presumably white in the original play, created by a black actress in the musical)

The restaged 25th Anniversary Tour version of The Phantom of the Opera featured a black actress as Carlotta Giudicelli. Also, in 2014, Norm Lewis became the first African-American to play the title role on Broadway.

Les MisÚrables is cast completely color-blind, so this is a frequent occurrence, and the opening Eponines in both the 25th Anniversary Broadway and UK Tour casts were black, suggesting a particular inclination toward black Eponines in the new version. There is also a black actor playing Enjolras (interestingly, this first happened in the 1998 film), and one of the understudies for Jean Valjean made history as both the youngest (21) and the first African-American to play the part.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the 2013 musical) changed Violet Beauregarde, who is specifically described as a redhead in the novel, and her parents from Caucasian to black and initially considered only black performers for Violet, whose role is rotated among 3 child actresses at a time. After complaints that the bratty character, whose "I Am" Song is a Boastful Rap, was overly stereotypical, the creators allowed non-black performers to be considered for the role too. Another adaptation of the novel, the opera The Golden Ticket, went with Ability over Appearance in its Atlanta Opera staging in 2012 when doublecasting the lead role of Charlie Bucket — one of the two child actors alternating in the role, Reuben Roy, was black even though all four actors playing his grandparents were white! (Charlie's parents are Adapted Out in that version.)

Miss Saigon: John, Chris' commanding officer, was initially played by white actors, but at some point in the show's run, was taken over by African-American ones. More significantly, toward the end of the show's Broadway run, Ellen (the woman Chris marries after the war), was cast with an Asian actress instead of the usual white blonde or redhead, resulting in a Replacement Goldfish situation—it now looked like Chris married Ellen not to get on with his life, but because she reminded him of his Lost Lenore Kim.

Corneilla Luna played the role of Kim in the Toronto production and the role of Ellen in the UK touring production, making her the only actress to do so, and a near-literal example of the "goldfish" trope.

This has happened in the current London revival also with Natalie Chua as one of the understudies for Ellen.

In Matilda: The Musical, in addition to Lavender often being cast as a Black Best Friend like in the film, the librarian Mrs. Phelps is Afro-Jamaican. In the 2015 US tour, Rudolpho was also black, and Amanda was Asian, creating a sort of Token Trio with Matildanote One of the touring actresses for Matilda was Filipina, but that was more of a Colorblind Casting and Lavender, until the black Kaci Walfall was replaced by Charlie Kersh, another Asian.

In Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Hermione is played by Noma Dumezweni, an English actress of Swazi descent. J. K. Rowling pointed out that this doesn't contradict canon in the slightest, since the only things used to describe Hermione in the books are her brown eyes and curly hair (except for a single scene that mentions her light face; also Rowling's sketches clearly depict Hermione as Caucasian).

The working-class Liverpool housewife title character of Shirley Valentine is usually played by white actresses, most famously Pauline Collins (who was the first to play her on the West End, on Broadway, and on film). In the 2010 West End revival, however, she was played by British Asian actress Meera Syal.

The 2016-17 touring production of The Little Mermaid launched by Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre featured an Asian Ariel. Likewise, the Broadway production cast the aforementioned Norm Lewis as King Triton, along with a multiracial ensemble as Ariel's sisters.

Used explicitly in Hamilton: the intention of Lin-Manuel Miranda was to have the cast reflect America as it exists in modern times, in all its diversity. He expresses this by having a cast deliberately devoid of white people, with the sole exception of King George III, who is white to emphasize the difference between England and the colonies.

Video Games

Mabinogi had two NPC characters, Bebhinn and Manus, changed from Caucasian to Black for Western localization. Manus' description wasn't altered, however, and mentions his Korean portrait's hairstyle.

All citizens of Tropico speak fluent Spanish and have skin colours indicative of Latin American heritage. Fair enough, since the setting is a Banana Republic somewhere in the Caribbean. However, this applies to all citizens, even recent immigrants who just got off the boat from London or Moscow.

As Billie was often confused for Asian (black hair and very pale skin in a black-and-white comic) by fans of Roomies!, David Willis just rolled with it and made her Dumbing of Age counterpart half-Asian.

The PBS Kids series The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! is based on a series of books known as The Cat in the Hat's Learning Library. In the books, the male child character was white, but he has been changed to black for the TV series. Additionally, the new books being released under the banner of The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That depict him as black.

Meta-example: when Total Drama switched to a new cast they released early character designs on their blog. Cameron and Mike were initially both white, but when designs were finalized became black and Ambiguously Brown, respectively.

Another meta-example are Darren and Miranda from As Told by Ginger. In the original pilot they are White but for the series itself they are both Black.

Cheetah's brief appearance in Super Best Friends Forever. Traditionally, the character is white, or at least used to be before making herself a Cheetah-girl, but in the short, she's brown-skinned with cat-like eyes and powers as well as the Cheetah suit.

In Lazoo the 2017 toon on CBC depicts Zuzi with dark skin and brown hair. In the 2015 apl game it is based on, she has light skin and orange hair. Her previous appearance is still visible in the thumbnail used in TV guides.

Other

The 5th Avenue Theatre's 2012 production of Oklahoma! made Jud Fry an African-American, sparking a fair amount of negative criticism for "racial stereotyping".

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